Spring And Cooking For The French

 

Spring And Cooking For The French

Spring

Spring announced itself this week but is predicted to take a break next week. Anyway it is coming and lasted long enough for me to get some useful things done. I’ve cleared the space where I will plant potatoes and onions but my seed potatoes could do with more time to continue sprouting so I will delay planting them for another ten days. I fed the gooseberry bushes and the garlic and shallots that are already well on the way and hope that will provide results in June. I also planted some climbing bean seeds and some spring onion and spinach beet seeds on my balcony. So vegetable growing is on the go. I have some more weeding to do among the leeks and cabbages and have to think what to do with about 10sm covered in cress. If next week is as dull and wet as the weather forecast predicts further action will have to wait a week and then I shall go to the market in Vaison to see what plants are on offer. It’s a temporary pause but I can feel the adrenalin flowing.

I have about 10 daffodils flowering out front and primroses are flowering on all the sheltered banks around. I haven’t noticed any violets or Japonica but they will certainly be around somewhere. And forsythia is blooming on my allotment. I’m waiting for the sunflower seeds that the birds that feed on my balcony always drop to sprout in the pots below so that I can transfer them to the allotment too. There’s a robust aquilegia there and I ‘ll have to think what other flowers I’ll grow there, probably marigolds or nasturtiums because both are easy.

Cooking For The French

Last night I had Daniel and Jean-Claude around to eat and I cooked a Chinese style chicken with rice, water chestnuts and bean sprouts. Jean-Claude was delighted but Daniel much less enthused; he liked the chicken and rice but not the water chestnuts or bean sprouts. This is a common problem I find when inviting French friends. Most, but happily not all, of my French friends have very conservative and traditional tastes. Spices are a risk. Saffron is OK but others are debatable. Chilli in any significant quantity is a definite no-no. I once asked a French friend why there was always fresh ginger in the supermarkets but no one seemed to cook with it. The answer was that the French make a tea, “tisane” with it but, cook with it? Never. Yet the rougail de saucisses I made a couple of weeks ago was roundly acclaimed and full of ginger. I think the problem may lie in innate traditional French tastes. I remember a programme years ago in which some renowned English chefs were invited to create a meal for their French counterparts. The meal went well, as expected, but what was not expected was the French reaction to the desert, made with elderberry flowers. The French gastronomes were delighted with the desert and all said “but we have elderberry flowers, why don’t we use them?” I suspect that, prior to this, any desert served to the French using the flavour of elderflowers would have been regarded with suspicion. However once tasted and used by a French chef it would be happily accepted. A friend who has spent time in Thailand, as I have, has the same reaction as I to the meals offered by a Thai lady in the village. We both say that the meals are OK but they are not Thai. Why? Because they have been adapted to French tastes (and, in fact, are popular here). They lack the authentic Thai flavour. But give the French an authentic Thai meal and most of them won’t like it. Perhaps it has something to do with travel. The French, in general, don’t have “la bougeotte”, itchy feet; after all France itself an offer almost any kind of holiday you want. So they tend not to have the experience of authentic foreign cuisine as much as other nationalities do. Only those French who have travelled extensively are likely to appreciate it.